This is Hacker Public Radio episode 3,979 for Thursday the second of November 2023.
Today's show is entitled, Fire Stick and Ed Blocking.
It is hosted by Operator and is about 25 minutes long.
It carries an explicit flag.
The summary is Operator Talks about recent apps for Fire Stick and blocking ads.
You are listening to a show from the Reserve queue.
We are airing it now because we had free slots that were not filled.
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Hello everyone, I am a two-in-other episode of Hacker Public Radio with your host, Operator.
Apologies again for the audio and the car still.
This will be pretty quick.
I am going to talk about Fire Stick or Fire TV or any kind of Android device that plugs into
a TV or a non-touch screen device options for YouTube.
I used to have videos for Android on using FireFox developer and enabling custom plug-ins
and you can do ad blocking with privacy battery and ad block and work YouTube sponsor
block.
This is an ad on for Chrome, but it is also for FireFox so it blocks the skips over the YouTube
stuff.
So you can have FireFox developer on Android with privacy battery, ad blocker and sponsor
block which will skip ad content on Android devices so it is actually mechanical.
This is because I was kind of fed up with the interface of new pipe for TVs and stuff.
I used new pipe still on Android to download the YouTube videos because it has multi-threaded
support or spider swarm downloading so you can download a video with 4threads at a time
with new pipe.
It makes it pretty easy.
On other command lines, tools, you can use YouTube download or YouTube DL, YouTube DL is another
one because YouTube download or of course kind of died for a second and then they rioted
to get it back up on GitHub.
So anyways, I was using new pipe on my TV, on my Fire TV and started getting frustrated
with the constant interface was awful for it and realized that there might be some other
options out there and I had to talk to someone, a coworker, the said, yeah, I just set
up all these Fire sticks on my Fire TVs, on all my TVs in my house and said, oh yeah,
I use new pipe, I'll send you the link to do that so you'll have to have ads for YouTube.
And then I want to send this guy, there's probably something better out there by now.
Prior to YouTube or new pipe, there was a few ones out there, like YouTube downloader,
which were kind of shady and then there was like two of them that were kind of shady that
I used on Android to download movies or download YouTube videos, but prior to new pipe,
there wasn't really much for Android or TVs to pull that content down or even watch it outside
of YouTube.
You can always, of course, use the browser and it was always kind of janky.
But before that, you had almost the other one that was the Brave browser, guys, the
same people that the Brave browser, it was called like two, the Ver2, or V2, or two
backs, or something like that.
Anyways, since it's been sued out of existence because they try to create some kind of,
there are a logo, looks a lot like YouTube's logo and they did something where they were
like selling crypto logos or whatever they call that.
And somehow they got sued out of existence for that.
And there's no more, a comma was called Ver2, or V2, or some kind of play on words.
And it was weird because you had to use like this local, like, called M, I think it was called
M, M Google, or something, it was a local app store that would, it would do its updates
with.
It was kind of weird, kind of odd, micro, micro, micro, something or other for Android.
And I wish I was to do the name of the app, but I think it's still around, it disappeared
for a while and it might be still around.
But for Android and touch devices, I still prefer new paint with the sponsor block.
And so you have to make sure you get new pipe with sponsor block.
If you just get the regular new pipe, it's not going to be as fun to you.
And sponsor block usually has a lot of the stuff disabled that you want to have enabled.
As it disabled by default, so you go in there and turn everything on.
And you pretty much get to go on touch devices, but not touch devices.
TV's, I realize the new pipe is an awful interface for that stuff.
And I did some googling around and searching around, we're not googling anymore.
I'm doing KGA.com, like $120 a year for unlimited.
But anyways, the new one I've suggested to my old coworker is smart tube next.
To get how project interface is wonderful, you can log in.
I'm like new pipe, I don't think you can even log in with new pipe,
I'm never even bothered to try it.
But the interface is a lot better for this smart tube next.
It has a sponsor block or a blocks built into it.
It also supports other things like fancam and some other YouTube clone of like in Russia or something.
And like one or two other types of video interfaces or media streaming media interfaces.
But let's log in, which is nice.
I can follow my people and get my sponsor search results in all of that.
Good stuff. And it actually, how am I actually enjoying watching YouTube on the fire stick?
Actually, not on my phone so much, because I always have no other app front in on my phone.
But with the TV, I'll get kind of bored of TV or I kind of want something, but I don't really want to watch TV.
I'll watch YouTube with this thing.
I'll try to remember when I upload this to put the show notes for it.
But if you go, if you look on YouTube for free load 101, if our ELOAD ones are your one,
you'll see two videos and one that has less views is the one that's actually
goes into detail of how to get a sponsor block, had block and privacy badger and working on firebox developer.
It's a bit of a wonky jump drew hoops. You have to set it up at account with
the developer version of firebox, like the firebox login. And then to sync all of that,
you have to have like another firebox login, I think. So you essentially have to have
the two login for firebox to sync it all together. The idea there is that once you sync it,
it's like Chrome's thing where it syncs like your bookmarks. So if and when you do those
your phone or whatever, you at least have your bookmarks back or your bookmarks back. And then
I don't know if it syncs your automatically, if it syncs your plugin, your plugin, but probably not.
It's not too much of a deal to watch that video again.
Outside of that, you know, other options for the fire stick I did, I swear I talked about this,
but there's a way to skip, also there's a way to skip the ads essentially. So when you,
if you don't notice, if you're using a fire stick or whatever, if you open a program, for example,
I use Plex. You open up the Plex app and walk away for two minutes. Guess what?
Screen's gonna go black and when you wake it back up, where is it going to be?
On the home screen. Well, what is the home screen? A bunch of ads. Great. I'm glad I paid for
device and I paid for Amazon Prime and I'm still getting ads and I can't make it stop no matter
how hard I want to. So there is a few ways to get around there. So I might be some easier projects
out there, put in the show notes if you know of an easier way to do it. But it's a little tricky
to find the right news article. But the order of operations is number one, you go into the
device settings for your fire TV fire stick and you enable developer mode that will allow you to
remotely connect to it and spawn a shell essentially. And Android, chill, maybe be, chill.
And it involves, it's kind of complicated, it involves getting your IP address and connecting to it
and turning on debug mode, which it's really hard to find. It's under like about or something
weird in the interface. So it's hard to find that. Once you have that, then you have to get
ADB and get the figure out how to get ADB to work. Download the ADB tools, the dev tools, or Google.
So once you have ADB working, then you can connect to your figure out what your IP is for your
fire stick and then you can connect to it. And there's like three commands you type that will essentially
tell it not to go to sleep. Now on the surface, it seems like cool. I win. You lose. Ha ha. No
ads for me. I can start the Flex app. And I don't have to worry about getting ads anymore. Well,
something happens over time, either the TVs kind of glitch out or there's never enough, there's
not enough power to them or something or maybe when you switch video modes that actually kills the
power to the thing or maybe the USB goes to sleep something. But of course, every time I turn my TV on
now, the one upstairs at least is when I use the fire stick upstairs the fair amount.
It will of course be back on the home screen. And also, it gives you a bunch of notifications
of something's been updated. This has been updated and it forces you to update apps that you
don't even want to update. So if you don't like the whole ecosystem, whatever, but there's
not a whole lot you can do outside of building your own little mini client for Flex or something.
And even then, the Flex app for Linux is pretty awful. I had to say, what they're more focused on,
you know, your fire TV, your fire 60 row crews, your Chromecast. I threw away my Chromecast because
it only supported the pure based or the streaming protocol, whatever it's called. And it was
not. How was I able to fire while it off properly? Even though I had certain streaming
broadcast protocols, any builder, whatever. So I finally gave up through the trash. It was an old
G1, a didn't one of the Chromecast and I got like a 4K or yeah, so 4K or a HD1. I guess it's
a TVP. There are cheap. I mean, if you wait until like Christmas, you probably get a 4K for like $20 or
$22 or something, stupid. I bought mine for like 15 years. Just for a 1080. I think it might be
4K also. Maybe not. Anyways, you know, it still does work. If you have Flex up and you leave the
TV on and then you leave and you know, make lunch or whatever and come back, it will still be on
but something happens for me in my use cases that what I wanted was to leave for days or weeks
come back to the TV and hit beyond Flex and I wouldn't have to see this stupid home screen with
them pushing them shows that nobody watches only because they push them. So that's some of
what can help you out. Other things, other devices, like I said, new pipe for touch screen,
devices for a command line, YouTube downloader and you can use RSC2, which is a command line tool that
will multi-thread for you. I do have a script on my GitHub that will, uh, it's a bad script that
I need to convert to PowerShell but I don't really feel like it. It will multi-thread download
list of videos from anywhere anywhere. We'll scrape it and multi-thread the download. So it will
consume any amount of bandwidth you send it. So for example, if you were to send it on list of
300 YouTube videos, it basically will download multi-sourm, like up to four threads for each one.
Um, like four threads every 15 seconds. So it will consume anything and download anything
faster than any other download you can possibly have because it uses multi-threaded for each
individual file and a list. So if you send it a list, uh, traditionally with YouTube downloader
supports file is right. The problem with YouTube downloader file is there's no way to send it
from what I understand multi-thread it with all the files at the same time or, you know, whatever.
So you can only do it. It'll do it only one at a time, which that's not what you want. You
want to download all of the, all at the same time. You can see them all of your bandwidth.
So um, the YouTube script that I have on my GitHub will, uh, it's for Windows, but you can take the
same logic and apply it for Excel scripting. Um, I don't really download videos and masks like
that anymore. Um, there's also another product that you did, uh, that I did itself like movies to
movies to text and it will attempt to download a YouTube or download a video using YouTube
downloader, then it will transcribe it, uh, it will convert it audio and then it will transcribe it
try to transcribe it for using, uh, Gaki or a Vosk and then Gaki will create keywords for it in
or essentially tags and key phrases for it, which is kind of an interesting project. So for
command line stuff, YouTube downloader, YouTube, VL, YouTube, you, you, YT-DL, um, you always had the updated
before you run it. Um, as far as other video-breaking ripping content and ideas, um, if you really
want to get super hairy, you start getting into inspecting the traffic. So for example, Venmo, or Vim
Vimio, Vino has um, paid and or authentication based video feeds that are, uh, not easy to download.
Um, there are some smarter people out there that rip. If you ever see like pirated videos and stuff,
these are the guys that can rip, uh, DRM content, um, and change the, you know, encoding and
figure out how to do different types of encoding. Um, uh, but for me, I don't really know how to do any
that stuff, and I only want to recognize the different encoding types. But for me, I can usually
get the content using a video, uh, it's called a video, uh, called multi-cut, multi-cut, multi-cut.
Um, if you, if you search for turbo download manager, there's also one called like multi-cut,
or, uh, the same website. It's like add-ons.net and it's called funny. Um, but there's multi, uh,
YouTube downloader thing that, um, that will support, uh, multiple different, uh, things.
Anyways, my focus on driving here for a second. Um, so the final way,
last and final way if you're still listening, you still can't rip the content with YouTube,
maybe it requires authentication. So all of these other downloaders are, uh, require authentication.
There are some that will support, um, um, H260 or H, HTS, HST. There's a few plug-ins for Chrome
that are actually legitimate that will let you download HST, um, HST videos, but even those are still
kind of buried within some kind of whatever. So they'll, they know that people have HST downloaders
and they'll put a little bit extra bits in there, maybe the header of the file or whatever,
to make it not show up in HST or scrape right. Um, so that's, that's one thing that's probably
not going to work, which you can try. Um, those are usually kind of shady. I don't really like
any of those. Uh, the, the final method I will use for downloading videos is, uh, basically the
verb suite. And you can use japeree on my GitHub to easily launch verb suite, but all you need is
Java to download the jar file. It comes with its own embedded, uh, Chrome. So verb suite is
verb, inspect traffic, uh, across and outward, even, uh, encrypt the traffic between you and the
internet. Pedestration testers use it to test web applications. Um, you can use it for debugging
web applications. Uh, it gives you a cool full control over the response and their, their requests
that you send back. Um, what I do it use it for is, uh, ribbing videos. So if I have authentication,
I can pass those tokens off to the other thing, which can process streaming video also and HSTs.
But you have to have those cookies. So you can use verb suite as a proxy.
Verb suite will handle all the cookies for you and you just feed it in a URL and a lot of the times
you can get, uh, a direct copy of whatever you're trying to pull down. Um, usually if it's a
handful of videos, you can just say, you know, find out which file is the video and just right click
and say, say, this file. Um, some other options are, you know, once you see the video come in,
you can look at the verb suite, uh, traffic and kind of dissect how the video is coming in and
maybe join you together. I've had less success with that. Usually what I'd like to do is, um,
if you, if you think about it, you have to support everything. Um, so what you'll have is, um, at first,
if you use a modern browser with DRM built into which Chrome does, uh, Chromium, I don't know if that
has DRM built into it, but Chrome most certainly does. And it's like sign, uh, DRM stuff is built into
the browser itself. Um, and when you download Chrome, you accept that you're like whatever all kinds
of bad stuff that Chrome's evil for or Google's evil for. But anyways, um, with that said, you have,
like, DRM content that can come in and weird forms. So to get around this, you can actually
pretend or change your, um, what, what can help or can happen sometimes, as you can use jambory,
which is also, we'll give you a portable, um, Android, um, emulator that runs on Windows, and along
with Haxium, the acceleration driver for Windows or for Intel, you can, uh, basically use that to
navigate to the same website. And you will be surprised. Um, the jambory will help you with all the
purpose-weets stuff. It'll do the certificates. It'll push the certificate to the virtual images
and learn at whatever. Um, you'll be surprised that if you do emulate a older, uh, older device,
or you use an older device where you use an actual device, um, you will notice that, um, the interface
is different. Great. Um, you have the support backwards compatibility. And in that, you sometimes,
you don't have the availability to have DRM or to serve up some weird encrypted, you know, video stream,
they just, you know, each just, each SD, or whatever they call it. Um, so, um, sometimes downgrading
your viewer or your browser can help some of that. Um, if they have a web app, or if they have
a mobile application, you can look at the mobile application and see if you can pull down the videos,
through, uh, looking at the traffic with verb suite. Um, again, if you're into the whole, like,
ripping stuff, like, you know, stuff from real legit DRM, things like Disney, or paramount pictures,
or any of those streaming services, um, those guys are smart enough, um, to do it, but I don't
know how they do it. Um, but there is no, as far as I know, there is no, like, master, you know,
file download or thing. Um, when you start getting into these DRM, they keep a very tight to the
chest, um, because they don't obviously want people downloading them, so they people figure out their
own ways. Um, there's, I've seen a few little snippets of code on GitHub around, like ripping
content from these major streaming providers, but they're like, you know, it would be like,
oh, here's, like, four things for, you know, re-compiling a library for something, and like, it requires
you to, like, know how to build your own, like, uh, what are they called those encoders or decoders?
So, you know, that's like, take the existing decoder, make a patch for it, and then, like, plug it
into whatever player you're using, like, the LCD or, um, and player, whatever they use on, um, uh,
the legs to, like, pull the content down somehow or whatever, but, um, that's beyond me, but,
I'd say about 80% of the time, um, I can go with it all the way to birth sweet and find the old
legacy URLs. Um, a lot of times you just look at the code, and it'll say, like,
bu- bu- bu- bu- bu- bu- bu- bu- bu- bu- bu- you know, feed this crazy HSTS, and it's like, I don't want
to do any of that. You look at the code, and you type basically the same file name, right? This is a little
trick. You take the- you take whatever unique identifier that whatever it is, and you search for
that unique file name across the whole thing in birth sweet, and if you're lucky, you'll see, like,
you know, compatibility URL essentially URL, like, a URL straight to the straight-up impact,
sometimes you'll get split, so you'll get audio and video and not to join them together,
which is a total pain to the butt, and you can do that with that effect. Um, what else have I seen?
It's pretty much it. I mean, I don't rip a whole lot of stuff anymore. There is one. There is a similar
plug-in or a similar Java applet. I don't remember what it's called a coworker, it's suggested to me.
I try to use it and it's pretty much garbage. Um, it's not really even as good as,
like, using Verb Suite with YouTube Beyond Downloader, or a bit of a big, with proxy support
in London letting Verb Suite handle all the traffic. Um, but I don't remember what it's called.
It's Java based, and it looks gross. You like, put in the URL, the thing you want to download,
and it's supposed to, like, parse the URL and, like, find the content for you, but I don't
honestly think it's any better than YouTube's other YouTube download or a YTTL. Um, so I wouldn't
really suggest that one. Um, as far as Linux goes, I have no idea. Um, you might actually have better
it like, but Linux, again, like, all the versatility we're in this coefficient type of stuff.
Anyways, folks, that's somebody who, that helps somebody out. If you know any other way,
easier way to just rip content, even with authentication, let me know. Um, like, when does the plus
came out? I tried to download their mobile app, and I looked at their browser, and I tried to
download just, like, see if I could rip. Um, they give you like a free month or whatever. I wanted
to see if I could rip a Mandalorian and just dump it straight to, uh, an image file, but that's not something.
Oh, season, um, like I said, you start getting into the DRM, uh, DRM decoders, and there's,
there's a higher method called. Anyways, I'll talk about somebody out. Um, you'll have to get
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